


Devils, Monsters

by KivaEmber



Series: Wine Cellar [55]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Crossover, Eldritch, Gen, Horror, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, grey morality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:34:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23527714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaEmber/pseuds/KivaEmber
Summary: When Terminus hit Amaurot, it was in the form of an unstoppable, ever-hungry parasite whose only drive was to consume all intelligent life. To prevent this, the world was intentionally sundered into Fourteen shards, in an attempt to 'quarantine' the infection away from the Source. This is the fallout of all this, and pretty much day-to-day of all powerful ancients who are locked in an eternal struggle with an all powerful eldritch abomination.Unstoppable Force meets Immovable Object indeed.(Minor Halo/FFXIV crossover where I combined The Final Days of Amaurot with The Flood, you're welcome)
Relationships: 14th Member of the Convocation of Fourteen/Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Igeyorhm/Lahabrea (Final Fantasy XIV)
Series: Wine Cellar [55]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/860528
Comments: 13
Kudos: 48





	1. Dust and Echoes

Prometheus leaned back a fraction on his precarious perch atop of a dilapidated tower of some kind - stone, architecture approximately that of pre-industrial stage (i.e no mass-produced materials present in its construction). The ash fall was relatively light today, giving the horizon a grungy grey colour as opposed to the choking black it normally was. Prometheus could actually see more than a few hundred metres from his lookout point because of it. 

He tentatively took it as an optimistic sign. Less ash fall meant the purgings were lessening in intensity. 

A gentle chime of bells jingled in his ear, and Prometheus lifted his hand to the linkpearl studded to his earlobe, sending a jolt of aether through it, “14th here.”

_ “Purger-2B here. Sector A-10 has been cleansed.” _

Prometheus hummed at that, “I see. Move onto Sector B, then. We’re ahead of schedule by a few weeks by my reckoning, so take your time setting up. Don’t want to make mistakes because of complacency.”

_ “Yes, 14th.” _

The call disconnected, and Prometheus sighed heavily, snapping his fingers and conjuring a set of binoculars for himself. He was currently residing in Sector A himself, in one of the earliest segments they hit. Judging by this tower, and the razed buildings surrounding it, it had been a capital city of a prosperous kingdom of some kind. Most likely had a population around tens of thousands - miniscule by an Amaurotine’s standards, but for a civilisation in these early stages? It would’ve been huge. 

A shame they’d never reach the potential they were meant to reach, but they were necessary sacrifices to halt the advance of  _ that. _

Terminus. 

An eternal, endless threat that could never die. A threat only mitigated by the extreme measure of  _ sundering _ the very planet they lived on, segmenting it into fourteen shards with the Source as a main control centre. It helped to initiate quarantine and purges of Terminus whenever it ‘bloomed’ amongst a population; that shard was locked down, the Lifestream’s flow towards it temporarily suspended to prevent  _ cross-contamination _ with the other shards, and then Purger teams headed in to scour every trace of Terminus they could find. 

Unfortunately, this involved also eliminating Terminus’s food source: biomass. 

They would raze the star, deliver unto it a calamity of untold proportions. The inhabitants of the infected shards always cursed their names as they died, never knowing that they were being saved from an even worse fate: the Purger teams took their lives, true, but they delivered them into the Lifestream, where they could be reborn. Terminus never killed you. It  _ stole _ you, assimilated you into itself, ripped away every memory, everything that made you  _ you, _ and hungered for more. 

It was as intelligent as the life it consumed, as powerful too. Prometheus shuddered to think how monstrous Terminus could’ve been, if it succeeded in subsuming their population. Unstoppable, no doubt, and it would’ve developed the intelligence and power needed to leave their planet, to fling itself out into the stars and continue to propagate. 

So, yes, this was dirty, horrible, awful work, one that gave Prometheus hideous nightmares and urges to drink himself blind and stupid, but it was necessary. It was a job that he  _ had _ to do, too, since his unique gift with the Lifestream meant he was one of the very rare few who could give an ‘all-clear’ and lift the shard’s quarantine, allowing aether - and life - to flow back into it and instigating a long, slow period of healing. 

(That was when the ‘Regeneration Teams’ came in, seeding new life and coaxing it back into development stages, before retreating and letting life take its course. It didn’t make up for all the atrocities they committed to the shard beforehand but… it was something, he supposed…)

“Thirteen thousand years of this shit,” he muttered under his breath, scanning his immediate environs with the binoculars. They learnt during one of their earlier purges, before they knew what they were doing, that Terminus was  _ cunning, _ in a starving beast kind of way. It knew enough to ‘play dead’ in sectors deemed ‘clear’, blooming behind their lines and ambushing them. Not that it did them any good, as any Amaurotines placed in Purger teams had an explosive device emplaced in their bodies to ensure total destruction the moment it sensed a Terminus infection intruding on their central nervous system. It massively reduced their manpower, though, as good Purgers were hard to come by nowadays. 

So, Prometheus watched, observing and sensing his environs, just to make sure. 

Another chime of bells in his ear, this time accompanied by the low thrum which indicated it was a call from outside the shard. Ah, it could only be one of two people. 

Prometheus lowered his binoculars, touching his linkpearl, “This Hades or Hyth?”

_ “Hades,” _ came the tired grunt,  _ “Where’s my hello?” _

“Hello, Hades, it’s so lovely to hear your dulcet tones once more, in this scorched barren wasteland of mine,” Prometheus mock-simpered, “What’s up? Bored in your cushy office back in paradise?” 

_ “Don’t start,” _ Hades groaned, the background noise being of rustling paper,  _ “But as you asked, I’ve just finished dealing with the documentation of all souls purged and deemed clear for reincarnation for the Thirteenth shard.” _

Prometheus grimaced. Ugh, that had been an awful mess, that shard. As well as contending with Terminus, the shard’s inhabitants, in their desperation to avoid destruction by either the Purger teams or Terminus, had invoked some weird ritual that summoned a monster of some sort. ‘Cloud of Darkness’, it had been called, and it had completely subsumed that shard - after eating its fill of Terminus. 

The inhabitants who hadn’t died were warped, transformed into ‘Voidsent’. Igeyorhm had been leading the Purger teams on that world, and was still torn up at how she hadn’t managed to prevent the Cloud of Darkness’s summoning. That world was still under quarantine, until they knew how to deal with that creature’s banishing. At least Terminus was staying clear of it too. 

“You found out where they’re being placed, yet? Since their world’s, uh, y’know, demon-land now?” 

_ “Sort of,” _ Hades muttered,  _ “Elidibus has decided to take responsibility over them, and we’re temporarily seeding them here on the Source, under close supervision until the Thirteenth shard’s issue is… resolved.”  _

“I still say we should just nuke it,” Prometheus said, “Aether constructs like the Cloud of Darkness are susceptible to gamma radiation and the EMP effect. I mean, the resulting fallout would be a pain to clean up…”

_ “We’re not nuking the Thirteenth Shard,” _ Hades said in a tone that implied he had this argument too many times,  _ “Aside from the fact that it would render the shard  _ inhabitable _ for tens of thousands of years, we have no way of knowing if it would even  _ work _.”  _

“Hmph,” Prometheus supposed he was right. It’d be terrible to damage a world like that and have it be for nothing, “Well, has Lahabrea come up with anything yet?”

_ “He’s working on it. The Cloud of Darkness physiology is similar to that of a Guardian Force, so it will most like be some Phantomology nonsense that will end up being the solution.”  _

“Great,” Prometheus said with little to no enthusiasm. A flash of movement below drew his attention, and he all but focused entirely on it, leaning forwards on his perch. A mound of rubble, movement- ah, yes- there. A grotesque, bloating Terminus unit, its greyed out, rotting skin quivering from the spores it was keeping trapped inside its body. Infector. 

“Look, I gotta go,” he said distractedly, “Terminus Infector Unit sighted. Moving to eliminate.” 

_ “Have fun,” _ Hades said dryly, then dropped the call. 

Prometheus banished his binoculars and conjured a helmet in its place. He settled it over his head, hearing the soft  _ hss _ of it sealing shut, a small light flashing in the bottom right corner of his visor telling him his oxygen levels. While Prometheus’s extensive, ah,  _ self-improvements _ rendered him marginally immune to Terminus, it was best not to tempt Fate too often. Hades would march down into the Underworld to yell at his soul in mid-reincarnation if he died to something as silly as lax safety protocols. 

He teleported down to ground level, not bothering to be discreet. At this stage the Terminus infection of this shard was in the ‘feral’ stage: uncoordinated yet predictable behaviour where Terminus was driven to gorge itself on biomass. Once it obtained enough assimilated minds to start  _ thinking _ though…

Prometheus ambled over to where the Infector Unit was sluggishly shambling out of the rubble. It was humanoid-ish, bipedal, two arms, though a bloated sac had replaced its upper torso and skull, a drooling maw like that of an insect set in the centre. Terminus hadn’t bothered with any wild alterations of the original structure, since its purpose was only to spread infection.

_ Not built for combat, but dangerous all the same, _ Prometheus mused, wondering how this thing was missed in the initial sweep. Someone must’ve been sloppy, or complacent. 

The Infector Unit spotted him, and lurched awkwardly in his direction, stick-thin arms reaching out with twitching, grasping fingers. 

Then came  _ The Sound. _

It wasn’t an audible sound, as such, but it was a  _ Sound. _ It carried through the aether, reverbing so deep inside your soul your bones felt like they were going to shatter into dust. It was a thousand million rats biting and crawling over him. It was a thousand million knives spearing into every nerve in his body. It was a thousand million voices howling in hatred and disgust inside his skull, crushing him beneath the weight of guilt and despair and terror and _ howcouldyouburnuskillusmurderermurderertaintedideyoudeservetodiediediedie _

It all stopped with a sharp snap of his fingers. 

A sunburst of orange and red flared in his vision, past the white-black spots of agony that had near blinded him. His visor automatically darkened so he wasn’t blinded, and he watched impassively as  _ The Sound _ rose into a crescendo of raw screaming, the Infector Unit writhing and flailing as blue flames consumed its corpse. In mere moments, it was just ash on the wind, drifting away on the breeze and leaving a cold, blissful silence behind. 

“...never gets better,” Prometheus rasped, taking off his helmet and wiping the blood off his upper lip. Shit, gave him a nosebleed, the pressure had been so strong. 

_ This _ was why only a certain type of person could do this job. Certain qualities, make up in the soul, a mental fortitude, only a small pool of people had the robustness to stand in the face of that -  _ concentrated _ by a mob of thousands all screaming  _ The Sound _ \- and be able to cast a killing spell. There was no  _ immunity _ to  _ The Sound, _ no way of building up resistance, you just… endured it. 

Agonisingly endured for  _ thirteen thousand years. _

Prometheus exhaled harshly, resting his helmet on his hip as he slowly blinked the tears out of his eyes, scanning his immediate environs. Well, if one measly Infector Unit managed to dodge detection, he better sweep this place with a fine-tooth comb. Last thing they needed was a  _ Combat _ Unit getting the jump on them. They were a lot worse. A lot, lot, lot worse. 

Prometheus shivered, wiping his nose once more and tapping the bridge to heal the burst blood vessels there. Welp, back to work, then. 

With a flicker, his form vanished, teleporting to yet another vantage point to continue his grim, grisly work. 


	2. Long Night of Solace

Amaurot was a mere shell of itself. 

It was an unflattering description, but Prometheus couldn’t help but think it every time he returned to this world. The portal that dealt with transport to the shards was atop a tall tower made of crystal, to better harness the energies of the land and sky to stabilise and fuel said portal, so Prometheus always had a good view of ‘home’ whenever he stepped back onto the Source. 

It was probably by design, knowing Hythlodaeus, a nice, subtle way of going ‘you’re home!’ to shell shocked Purger teams craving for a sniff of normality before being sent back out into hell again. Everything about the arrival’s lounge was built around the long stretch of window offering a view of the city below, the chairs and tables crowded around it for comfort as they waited for decontamination. 

Ah, that was always the nice bit, the  _ decontamination. _

Prometheus sipped his drink - some fruity soda, since alcohol was banned from the arrival’s lounge - sprawled out in his chair watching the city far below him. It was so small, nowadays, a tiny fragment of their past life sheltered behind tall walls, the rest dug out deep underground in an effort not to intrude any further into the wildlands of the Source. The rest of the planet had recovered from Terminus, lesser societies and civilisations springing forth… it was best not to interfere with them, or be bothered by them in turn. 

Once upon a time, Prometheus would’ve been curious enough to walk amongst them under their guise, but he didn’t have the time or mental energy for that. Terminus was too aggressive and tireless to leave to its own devices, even for a few years. 

He knew the other civilisations, the inheritors of Jeduma, Xerora, Nhilisius and Zephyrion all gazed enviously at their walls. They had a vague inkling of what they had lost, during the Great Sundering, had forgotten they had consented to it, and now thought the remnants of Amaurot powerful Gods who locked them out of ‘paradise’ and was the cause of their woes (plague, famine, war, etc). It was ridiculous and made Prometheus’s head hurt just trying to understand their logic. 

Mortals. Honestly. 

“I’ve gotten bitter in my old age,” Prometheus joked quietly. Old age. Hah, there was once a time when Amaurotines lived well beyond a hundred thousand years! Not so much anymore. 

“14th?”

Prometheus sat up, setting his drink down on the table as a Purifier approached him. A subset of the Purger class, Purifiers were tasked with the decontamination and reintegration of Purger teams from deployment. Prometheus had never seen one showing any skin whatsoever, always encased in an armour-like protective suit with a helmeted mask mounted with a tinted visor and breathing apparatus. Just to make sure no contamination happened if an infected Purger  _ did _ manage to get through all the other safeguards. 

(Needless to say, their masks underwent a minor cultural revolution in the aftermath of Terminus, evolving into full on helmets in various styles,  _ just in case _ )

This Purifier was quite short - young, maybe just reached adulthood - and slender, holding a clipboard close to their chest with their pen held at the ready. Their mask was dominated by a large, black-tinted visor, a tiny ‘tattoo’ of a roaring lion on the left cheek. 

“That’s me,” he said, standing up from his seat, “Decontamination time?”

The Purifier nodded, “Yessir. I’m Purifier Epione who will be leading your decontamination today. First: are there any incidents or concerns you wish to raise before we start?”

“None that come to mind,” Prometheus said, “Fit as a fiddle, as per usual.” 

“Hm,” Purifier Epione said, no doubt having heard that countless times already, “Well, we’ll test that now, sir. Follow me.”

Prometheus followed, bracing himself for the invasive procedures to come. It was deeply and incredibly unpleasant, but necessary, as the Flood was capable of  _ nesting _ inside a victim’s cells until undergoing abrupt activity, so they had to be very, very,  _ very _ thorough to ensure that Purgers returning home weren’t bringing a  _ friend. _

If even  _ one _ managed to slip through the cracks and enter Amaurot… well, all their work would’ve been for nothing. 

* * *

Five hours later, an exhausted Prometheus was given the all-clear and permission to go home. 

His somewhat wonky teleport had him land in his flower patch instead of the front doorstep, and he muttered quietly as he gingerly stepped out of his tulips and onto his garden path, ambling up to his front door. It seemed Hades had been round like he promised, taking care of his plants while he’d been gone. 

_ Should visit him later, _ Prometheus noted idly, drawing a line down the length of his front door while sending out a sequence of aether pulses. With a chime and a click, his door unlocked. 

Finally. Home, sweet Home. 

He stumbled inside with all the grace of a drunken elephant, haphazardly waving a hand and dismissing his biohazard armour into the aether as he weaved an unsteady path to his bedroom. Decontamination had scoured every inch of him, turned his aether channels and his organs practically  _ inside out, _ so right now all he wanted to do was curl up in bed, go comatose for a few hours, and  _ then _ attempt at some normal human living. 

When he reached his bed, he didn’t even remember getting in it. He was asleep before his head so much as touched the pillow. 

* * *

He woke up without really realising eight hours later, his hand grasping a wrist and a vicious spell on his lips before his consciousness caught up with the rest of him, stemming the Firaga before it could spark. 

“Prom,” Hades’s husky voice murmured, “It’s me.”

Oh. 

“Shouldn’t wake me up like that,” Prometheus mumbled, letting go of Hades’s wrist and lying back down from where he’d half-jerked upright. His bones hurt. His muscles hurt. His fucking  _ veins _ hurt, and he squinted groggily up at his friend.

Hades looked tired, skin paler and with darker circles under his eyes, but he looked  _ fine, _ which was all Prometheus could ask for in these trying times. 

“You were tossing about, muttering curses,” Hades said pointedly, “Didn’t want you setting your bed on fire in your sleep again, so.”

“That happened  _ once, _ ” Prometheus lied, “And it was a mini-nightmare, so it was fine.”

“A  _ mini _ -nightmare,” Hades repeated slowly, sitting down on the edge of his bed. He was still in his work robes, always a screaming indicator he was either one of the Convocation or worked high up in government. They were the only ones who wore robes nowadays, “A nightmare is a nightmare, I would think.”

“They come in tiers now,” Prometheus said dully, “Also some shit, you just get desensitised to, I guess.”

Hades was quiet. Prometheus didn’t mind. It was better than pointless platitudes. 

His nightmare honestly hadn’t been anything to write home about, anyways. Just his brain doing another rehash of the Sixth Shard, where he had been the only survivor of a Purger team. That shard, Terminus had assimilated enough of the native civilisation to develop intelligence and, well, yeah. It had been A Time, one that happened thousands of years ago and was a very well-worn, oversaturated nightmare that had lost most of its bite. 

“So, how’re things?” Prometheus asked, wanting a distraction even if it was Hades droning on about boring paperwork, “Still being slowly crushed under the weight of your bureaucracy yet?”

“I was crushed long ago,” Hades muttered, “Budge over, by the way. I want to  _ lounge. _ ”

“Bossy,” Prometheus huffed, but he obligingly budged, stretching lazily as Hades practically  _ flopped _ next to him. He’d like to say this was where they really got into the whole ‘welcome home’ thing most couples got into, but the pair of them were too tired so they just stared at his ceiling instead, their hands just about touching. 

“...I should put something interesting on the ceiling,” Prometheus said after a long, companionable silence, “We always end up just doing this instead of fucking.”

Hades grunted, “Do you want to? Fuck I mean.”

“Nah, too tired.”

“Mm,” Hades was clearly relieved, “You should put pictures of birds up there. Stars know you’ve got a whole archive worth of them.” 

Prometheus didn’t bother denying that, because, yeah, he did. He also had a folder of them on his tablet, just to help him get into a good mindset out in the field, as nothing helped him focus more than looking at images or videos of birds being birds. 

“Speaking of, I’ve got a Birds of Paradises documentary I’ve got saved on my tablet,” Prometheus said, gesturing and drawing said tablet out of his internal inventory. It manifested gently in his hand, “Wanna watch with me?” 

“I’ll fall asleep after the intro most likely, but yes.” 

So that was how Prometheus’s welcome home progressed, with Hades snoring on his shoulder and him watching a documentary he had watched a thousand times before. It was a well-worn, comfortable routine, one that made a tension he hadn’t known he’d been carrying ease out of him. It was always jarring, to return to normality after watching a world burn for the fiftieth time, but times like this, Prometheus could always forget, for a little bit, the horrors he faced and performed to ensure these slices of normality could exist. 

Amaurot was his home still, even if it was a shell of its normal self. He wanted to protect that, for as long as he could. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> double update in one day wao 
> 
> as you can tell i am super inspired hghghgfdd
> 
> but ye if there's any specific aspect of this au you want me tofocus on just shoot a comment or smth. don't forget to kudos!


	3. Weight of Failure

Approximately three hundred and forty five thousand kilometres away from their planet, following in the orbit of their natural moon, was Lyssa, Amaurot’s orbital space station. 

A third of the size of their natural moon, Selene, it was a well-armoured orb with no clear entry or exit. Indeed, there were no docking bays for spaceships and the like, for the only way to arrive at the space station was via a portal very much like the one in the Crystal Tower, keyed to specific individuals’ aether signatures. The ‘shell’ was layers upon layers of plating and nasty curses inlaid into the metal, to ensure that whatever was in there could not easily escape, if they couldn’t interface with the portal.

Such as the Terminus samples on board. 

Yes, Lyssa was not just an orbital space station, it was a  _ research station. _ It was practically Lahabrea’s second home at this point, with how often he spent his time there, pouring over their precious, heavily guarded samples in an effort to figure out the important question: 

How can Terminus be defeated, once and for all?

It was a parasite, this much was clear. Its mere survival hinged on there being a food source for it to consume - and subsume. Its base instinct was to continuously spread and propagate, to eat and eat and eat; so it stood to reason that once the parasite had had its fill on their Planet, it would use its ill-gotten resources, intelligence and knowledge to construct a way to fling itself out into the stars, in hopes of finding another source of food to terrorise. 

For an unnerving fact was thus: Terminus spores were as hardy as Tardigrades. Terminus spores could withstand environments as cold as -200C, or as high 150C. It could also survive radiation, boiling liquids, a pressure of 1800 atmospheres and even the  _ vacuum of space. _ The spores could endure all this… and still be  _ viable.  _ However, while Terminus could theoretically survive anywhere life could potentially be found, it still had its preferences. 

Wet, humid environs hastened the production of “Terminus matter”, a fleshy growth spawned from the corpses it subsumed into itself, once it felt the need to reduce production of Combat and Infector Units. These were entirely made up of something Lahabrea dubbed ‘Terminus Super Cells’, highly complex cells that could perform any function required of it and were aggressive in its consumption and facilitation of its host’s cells. 

In fact, its abilities ran closely parallel to a less dangerous microorganism belonging to the  _ Argobacterium _ genus. Bacteria that utilised horizontal gene transfer to insert desired DNA into its target - plants, in this case - generating tumours that allowed it to thrive. 

Upon hitting that small realisation a few millennia back, Lahabrea had made some strides in understanding how Terminus functioned biologically, and with a few controlled observations of introducing some spores to small mammals, he mostly understood how the infection happened step-by-step. With this understanding, he had hoped a cure would soon be within reach - or at least, some sort of  _ vaccine _ but… 

Terminus was adaptive. Horribly, amazingly, brilliantly adaptive. No, a vaccine won’t work here. 

Thirteen thousand long years Lahabrea had been hunting for a cure, or a pesticide, or  _ something _ to combat this parasitic threat, but all he could discover was knowledge they already knew: 

1\. Terminus was as intelligent and powerful as the prey it devoured

2\. When encountered, fire was only the only reliable way to eradicate its hosts and any spores they might carry inside of it

3\. Once an Infector Unit pierces its victim’s skin, the victim is compromised and is to be destroyed on the spot (unless that victim is the 14th, whereupon he follows a separate protocol), as it only takes approximately 3.4 seconds for the Infector Unit to consume the victim’s consciousness and take control of its central nervous system 

4\. Once Terminus has gathered enough biomass, it will generate a centralised consciousness that is dangerously cunning and intelligent. They had only observed this once on the Sixth Shard, and the 14th had barely escaped that shard alive and uncompromised. They ended up having to summon a world-wide meteor shower to turn the surface of that world into molten  _ slag _ to eradicate the threat. 

5\. Terminus could spontaneously spawn at any point, at any time, on any shard aside from the Source, and it still isn’t known how this is done

6\. Terminus is an ‘Eldritch Entity’, because who the fuck knows what or how it came to be

A cure? A vaccine? A clear explanation on its origins? Nothing. Thirteen thousand years, and Lahabrea had  _ nothing. _

Yet, all he could do was continue his long, thankless work, up here in this isolated space station, the weight of his bomb implant heavy in his chest, just in case any of their heavily guarded subjects broke free of their containment cells. He would tell himself;  _ this time _ he will discover something,  _ this time _ he will figure out a way to save their civilisation from the slow march of extinction it was heading towards. 

For if Amaurot falls, there would be no one left to fight Terminus, no one to bar its path to the Source, and consume everything in sight. They  _ had _ to figure out a cure. 

They had to. 

* * *

“So,” Prometheus began, “Is Lahabrea still banished to the moon?”

“He’s not  _ banished _ ,” Igeyorhm said, not looking up from her newspaper. Her cup of tea remained untouched, despite it being in danger of cooling, “He’s just very hard at work, like the rest of us.” 

“Hm.” 

The little cafe he and his fellow Convocation member were at was pleasantly quiet and empty. It being mid-morning, the majority of people were still attending their duties, with only those on leave like himself and Igeyorhm having the opportunity to grab a coffee, chocolate muffin, and  _ chat. _

Sometimes, Prometheus marvelled how it took only a near world-ending apocalypse for him to be on better terms with his co-workers. His and Igeyorhm’s relationship had been professionally cordial before, now it was, dare he say it, downright  _ friendly. _ It boggled the mind. 

A rustle of paper, and Igeyorhm turned the page of her newspaper ( _ “Life returns to the First Shard!” _ screamed the front page of the  _ Amaurot Times _ ), her dark eyes tired as she skimmed the words without really reading. Prometheus could tell, he saw that same exact expression on Hades’s face all the time. 

“Hey, Asteria,” Prometheus said, dropping the title since they were mostly alone, “Everything good up there?”

“...” Igeyorhm didn’t move for a moment, then sighed heavily, folding the paper up and dismissing it into the aether, “Just the usual.”

Prometheus nodded knowingly. The usual sucked. 

“Chiron rarely leaves Lyssa nowadays,” Igeyorhm continued, and it took Prometheus a moment to recall that as Lahabrea’s name, “I understand why, of course, the fight against Terminus takes precedence against all else, but…”

She trailed off, her mouth twisted into a frustrated grimace, “I haven’t helped his workload, either, with my failures on the Thirteenth.”

“You still feeling guilty about that?” Prometheus sighed, “Asteria, that couldn’t be helped. I don’t think anyone thought the natives would’ve summoned whatever the hell that thing was. Almost as bad as Terminus, ergh.”

“Rationally, I know this,” Igeyorhm said, “But feelings rarely heed your rational thoughts, do they? After all, you still feel guilty over the Sixth Shard, don’t you?”

Prometheus winced, “Um.”

“Exactly,” Igeyorhm finally picked up her tea to take a sip - and wrinkled her nose, “Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s cold by now. Want me to…?”

“No, I can,” she tapped the side of her cup, a flash of steam rising from the now hot beverage.

Prometheus leaned back in his seat as Igeyorhm drank her now hot tea, tapping his fingers in an idle rhythm on the table. 

“You’re right,” he said, keeping his gaze downwards, “I do feel guilty over the Sixth Shard. But, to be fair, that  _ was _ my fault.” 

Igeyorhm gazed at him silently for a long, intense moment, “You couldn’t have known Terminus had already obtained intelligence when you landed.”

“Yeah, but there were signs, during the initial purging phases,” Prometheus muttered, “I kept thinking something wasn’t right, but I ignored the feeling and kept pushing my team onwards. I thought it’d be an easy job, like the previous shard, and instead, well. You know how it turned out.”

“I know,” Igeyorhm said very quietly. 

Nineteen Purgers dead. An entire world subjected to orbital bombardment to cleanse it of Terminus, extreme even by their measures, and Prometheus, the shell-shocked, traumatised survivor who had been half-feral with maddened terror when he got extracted before the world boiled under its own ignited atmosphere. 

He had no idea how he managed to regain his sanity, after being trapped on a world infested to the  _ core _ with Terminus, all screaming  _ The Sound _ until it engraved itself on the inside of his skull. He still heard it when he went to sleep, still heard it on the very edges of his hearing like tinnitus, still heard it in the darkest of nights, his heart thumping high in his throat as he waited. Just. Waited. 

Sometimes, Prometheus wondered if a piece of Terminus was forever lodged in his psyche. Not the infectious sort, but the sort that came with assimilation. Even for him, it had been terrifyingly close… 

He shook his head sharply, to dislodge those thoughts. Not now. He was hanging out with a friend. Not a time to delve into that rabbit hole of trauma. 

“Anyway,” he said roughly, “ _ Anyway, _ so, uh, what’ve you been doing? Since your beau is still trapped in his moon-base.” 

Igeyorhm hesitated, giving him a concerned look, but she went with the subject change, bless her; “Ice sculpting.”

“ _ Ice sculpting? _ ”

“Ice magic is my expertise,” Igeyorhm sniffed, “And I find it calming to do.”

“So, what, you imagine the shape you want your ice to take and…?”

“No, I sculpt it by hand,” Igeyorhm mimed using a chisel and hammer, “I use my magic to prevent the ice from melting, so I can take my time.”

Prometheus frowned in confusion, “You’re doing it the mortal way?”

“The mortal way is usually the most satisfying way,” Igeyorhm said, “Remember? You said that yourself, before.”

Yeah, but that had been before all this, when efficiency overtook  _ personal satisfaction. _ Still, Prometheus wouldn’t begrudge Igeyorhm finding her peace where she could, especially as her partner was stuck in space still, so he shrugged lazily, “Got me there.” 

“How about you?” Igeyorhm asked, “Any new hobbies beyond bird-watching?”

“Not really… just been binging on documentaries and the like,” Prometheus said, “My experiments are on hold too, until this Terminus thing is resolved, and I’m way too busy to start something new…”

“I see,” Igeyorhm said, in the exact same way Hythlodaeus did when he thought Prometheus was being unreasonable about something. 

“I am!” He quickly defended himself.

“You’re not busy now,” Igeyorhm pointed out reasonably. 

Prometheus hated reasonableness from his friends, “Yes, I am. I’m busy socialising with you.” 

“Fine, since you’re busy  _ socialising _ with me,” Igeyorhm said dryly, rising from her seat and putting her helmet back in, the navy-tinted visor reflecting the fluorescent light above, “Then you can join me in  _ my  _ hobby.”

“But I don’t know how to-”

“I’ll teach you. Now shut up and come with.” 

Meekly, Prometheus stood up and followed Igeyorhm in her confident wake, resigned to his fate. Once she got an idea in her head, she was downright impossible to dissuade. Besides, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, failing horribly at ice sculpting for a few hours. Better than sitting around stewing in his own thoughts... 

(After that day, Prometheus did indeed pick up a new hobby, something Igeyorhm was unbearably smug about afterwards)


	4. Honourable Intentions

_ “Entering Ground Zero in three, two…” _

Prometheus took that final second to brace, the streaking infinity of the void peeling back just in time for him and his team to land feet first into hell itself. 

The discharge of their violent entry into the shard cleared their immediate surroundings - a courtyard, cobbled stone, blood, corpses, animal howls and human screams and  _ The Sound _ cracking through the atmosphere. Dust lurched up as a cloud, and Prometheus was up on his feet before it began to settle, arms sweeping up and conjuring a shield just as the Terminus horde, stunned but not letting it arrest their momentum, surged in on the fresh meat that just dropped in their midst like a flood of infected flesh. 

“Triplecast Ultima, now!” he barked, not flinching from the strain of the veritable  _ crush _ of twisted, monstrous bodies clawing and battering the shield.  _ Full feral-stage, _ a detached part of his mind noted clinically,  _ at fever pitch. Must have gorged a lot.  _

The ambient aether  _ spiked _ , the wind carrying the hot scent of burning coal and wood, and Prometheus didn’t have to look behind him to know his four teammates were combining their strength for their spell. Grimly known as the ‘Cityrazer’, the triplecast Ultima powered by four Amaurotines at max strength was more than enough to level a city and ignite a near-uncontrollable firestorm. 

Prometheus, once more,  _ braced. _

There was a split second, just before the spell detonated, where all sound,  _ The Sound _ , muted, an abrupt sucking noise as a spontaneous vacuum formed beyond their protective barrier, a glint of a white star sparking above their heads, followed by a shrieking whine that made his teeth ache - Prometheus closed his eyes. 

And with a monstrous roar that drowned everything out, the City of Sevine, and all of its inhabitants, soldiers and the Terminus horde that resided in it, were wiped off the map in an instant. 

* * *

“Ground Zero cleansed, deeming it Sector-A1 for the remainder of the op.”

_ “Roger that, 14th. Proceed with the FOB placement and await reinforcements to begin Purging Procedure at full momentum, over.” _

“Roger. Out.”

Prometheus disconnected the call with their coordinator back on the Source, taking a moment to look at his surroundings. They were still in what had been the open plaza at their initial landing, but was now merely a massive crater of glass. Beyond the initial impact site, Prometheus could see the broken spires and towers of buildings that had only just managed to weather the blast. That was their next location, to purge any Terminus that had survived their arrival. 

It was a tried and true method, arriving into infested shards. There was no gentle build up of operations with Terminus. You had to land in hard, fast, and blow up whatever was there to clear yourself an area to work with. The natives… there was no time to explain or attempt saving. There’d be no point. 

He turned to his four teammates, known during this op only as Purger 2A, 2B, 2C and 2D. With their uniformed armour and visored helmets, the only way to tell between them was the unique signature of their aether, and the small, greyed identification code on their left pauldron.

“Alright, let's turn this slagpit into a FOB,” Prometheus ordered, pointing at the still-cooling ground beneath their feet, “I’m gonna scout the edges, see what I can learn about this shard before we proceed.” 

His team murmured their understanding, immediately getting to work conjuring the necessary materials for the FOB (a tent for resting, a portal receiver for a smoother landing with the reinforcements, a mess tent, etcetera, etcetera). Prometheus left them to it, trusting them to do a good job as per usual, and teleported to the furthest point of the crater, where the ground was still soft and shimmering with heat. 

“Hm,” he said, as he landed on a tarmac road, painted lines and burning husks of vehicles on either side, “This one’s fairly advanced…”

By mortal standards, anyways. Terminus normally cropped up on the shards before an Industrial Revolution could happen, but this shard, the Second, had a weird time dilation effect warping it. It took them over a month to force its timeframe closer to the Source, so a thousand years didn’t pass back home while they were stuck here. Perhaps that time dilation was why Terminus bloomed so late here… 

Prometheus took in his surroundings with a keener eyes, noting the sturdiness of buildings (steel girdles, modern brick and mortar), the twisted remains of electric pylons, the charred corpses littering the scorched ground. Prometheus didn’t look at them much, only long enough to check they weren’t Terminus corpses still viable for reanimation. 

“This,” he sighed, “Might complicate things.”

The more advanced the civilisation was when Terminus hit, the more difficult it was to uproot them. This was because Purger teams ended up fighting the native population alongside Terminus, and it was an unnecessary,  _ annoying _ strain. For some reason, technologically or magically advanced civilisations seemed to think  _ they’d _ be the exception for Terminus, and win or successfully fight it back or whatever, and viewed the Amaurotines as unreasonable extremists in their single-minded crusade against the parasite. 

If Amaurot, the most powerful civilisation to ever  _ exist _ , couldn’t do it, then these lesser civilisations had no hope. 

“Mortals are stupidly tenacious though, I’ll give them that,” Prometheus muttered to himself, “Having only one life sort of… hm?” 

A flutter of aether, weak, snagged his attention. He went still, but eased up when he recognised it as a native’s and not an infected. He followed the fluttering - panicked, weak, clearly on the verge of dying - and it took him to a small, collapsed building, its signage written in gibberish that he had no way of translating. After a few circuits of the crumbled remains, where he found broken furniture or a dead body of sorts in some kind of uniform, he found where the foundations sunk in slightly, and… ah, an underground bunker. 

A wave of his hand, and he lazily lifted the debris and sublimated the foundation to make a stable, open entry. Slick steps cut into the bedrock beneath twisted into the darkness, and, mentally willing his visor’s headlamp on, he went down. 

There was a reason he was doing this, and sadly it wasn’t a humanitarian one. Catching a live native allowed them to gain vital knowledge of the landscape and infrastructure of their shard, and catching a  _ dying _ one… well, it meant easier information extraction. In return, Prometheus could ease their way into the afterlife, instead of leaving them to die alone in the dark, possibly in tremendous pain.

The steps led into a very small room, his lamplight scanning the ground (metal, smooth) until it found his target. A medium sized humanoid, two legs, two arms, female, choking and gasping on blood from… ah. The impact of the Ultima spell must’ve crushed her internal organs, even if she escaped the worst of the heat and flame that those on the surface didn’t. Honestly, it would’ve been kinder for her to be incinerated. At least that death would’ve been instant. 

The humanoid (dirty blond hair, very bright green eyes, dark skin, physiology identical to Amaurotines) made a gurgled, tinny noise as he approached, the whites of her bloodshot eyes visible. Her fear cracked through the weak pulses of her aether, this tiny, fragmented soul, and Prometheus wordlessly knelt at her side and pressed his hand against her forehead. 

“Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon,” he told her, in the language that transcended the soul’s barrier, and psychically reached out. 

A minute was all it took. 

A minute of  _ imtrappedinthebunkerthealarmswentoff  _ learning the technological progress of this civilisation and _ whosattackinguswhoisitvraresagainwhois  _ the geopolitical climate of the world and _ aaaaawhatisthisnoise  _ the nature of Terminus’s invasion and _ painithurtshelpmehelpmehelpme _ how far it had progressed.

A minute, and with an abrupt, nauseating jolt, the woman’s soul winked out from the strain of his mental interrogation. Like the snuffing of a candle, short, sharp, a lingering scent of what had been there, and Prometheus eased back on his heels. The woman’s memories lingered close to the forefront, bellowing the worst news he could hear at that moment. 

“...shit.”

* * *

When Prometheus returned to his team, the FOB mostly set up, he told them the dreaded news once he had them gathered, wanting it over and done with like ripping off an Infector Unit from his arm. 

“They’re spacefaring,” he said grimly, “They’ve colonised other planets in this solar system and another one nearby.”

“Fuck,” Purger-2A breathed, “Seriously?”

“Stars…” Purger-2B groaned, slouching forwards dramatically, all professionalism lost, “I hate it when they’re spacefaring.”

“Wait, there’s been spacefaring ones before?” Purger-2C queried. Prometheus vaguely remembered he was fairly new, being less than four hundred years old. 

“About two,” Purger-2D answered, “The first one was a mess, and the second we had to use  _ it.” _

“Omega,” Prometheus sighed, rubbing at the front of his vizor in lieu of pinching the bridge of his nose, “It would be best in this situation. She’s capable of long-distance FTL, so her razing the solar system should finish the op in less than a month.”

“Yeah, but…” Purger-2B made a vague gesture that succiently summed up the situation, “It’s batshit crazy.”

That was true. Omega was indeed batshit crazy. 

“It’s either that, or we have to visit each individual colonised planet,” Prometheus said, “And raze it via orbital bombardment… and that’s while fighting whatever space navy the natives cooked up. Have you ever fought a space battle? It’s a fucking pain.”

“Not many spells work right in space,” Purger-2D grumbled. 

“And I don’t want to fly around in space in a  _ combustible tincan _ getting shot at by the natives,” Prometheus said flatly, “Omega can have that pleasure, bless her.”

“Sir, why do you call it ‘her’?” Purger-2C asked, “I thought Omega was an automation?” 

“Omega is... “ Prometheus hesitated, not really wanting to get into how Amaurot managed to wrangle their ‘backup plan’. Prometheus had mostly dealt with Omega’s ‘subjugation’, due to his own…  _ improvements _ that allowed easier interfacing with her core. 

“That’s not relevant right now,” Purger-2B cut in, “So, should we make adjustments to the portal stabiliser, then? Since Omega is a bit, er, bigger than an Amaurotine.” 

“Yeah. I’m guessing you know the dimensions for it?”

“Sure thing.”

Prometheus left his team to make the adjustments, taking this moment to brood over their situation. They could let Omega off her leash like a hound after a hare, following in her wake to do any clean up in case she missed a spot, but… he didn’t really like it, relying overly much on her. It felt kinda…  _ dirty _ . 

Or, dirtier, considering they were exterminating a successful civilisation from history for having the misfortune of harbouring Terminus in their midst. If they were spacefaring, then it’d only be a matter of time before it escaped the Solar System on this shard, and… 

Fuck, that wasn’t even getting into the issue of the  _ dimensional fluctations _ these shards were trapped in. Due to the nature of the Sundering, all shards and the Source co-existed at the same time, in the same place, just layered across multiple, shifting dimensions, so reality didn’t absolutely  _ shit _ itself from trying to process fourteen worlds existing at the same spot. From what Prometheus understood, vaguely, it was that the shards methodically rotated throughout these layers of dimensions, never existing in the same one, filling a spot made vacant like an ouroboros of impossibility. Spacefaring civilisations invited… awkwardness, since the rest of the Solar System wasn’t trapped in that anomaly and forced reality to realise something weird was up. 

Might explain the extreme time dilation, though. It was probably a rubber band stretching to a breaking point. If it weren’t Terminus, the snapback as the other shards yanked this one back into line would’ve killed everything in it anyways - and the resulting ripple effect might have caused devastation back on the Source. 

“Maybe Terminus cropping up here was a good thing…” Prometheus muttered to himself, glancing up at the sky. It was grey and smoky still from the residue ash of the localised firestorm, but between the thinning smog he could see blue skies. It always looked the same on every shard, that sky. 

_ (“What if this was  _ your _ world? Would you just lie down and let some alien species burn it to the ground to kill this supposed great evil?” _

_ “Yes.”) _

Yet, same sky or not, the people that lived under it were utterly alien to them. More selfish, greedy and short-sighted. Not a single one willingly sacrificed themselves for the greater good. They fought back, fang, tooth and claw, like cornered animals, like Terminus, thinking their survival was worth more than the continuation of overall life. Unlike the Amaurotines, who had culled over 95% of their own population to stall Terminus in its tracks and Sunder the world into its current pathetic state. 

It was only the knowledge that Terminus would survive that ensured they left enough people to live to continue the fight. End game wasn’t their ultimate survival: end game was eradicating Terminus, ushering in the Ardor, and… letting life continue on as they faded into the Lifestream, to be reunited with their lost kin. Their era had ended over 13000 years ago.

At least, that had been the plan at the beginning. But after so long, different opinions and factions were creeping into Amaurotines’ way of thinking, cross-contamination from these Sundered societies infecting them in more insidious ways than Terminus. Rumbles of cutting the Source off entirely and living in peace while Terminus ravaged the shards and left them alone drifted up, or talk of conquering the entirety of the Source, and wrenching the shards into an iron-fist of control to marshal the ‘lesser races’ into cannon fodder…

Prometheus viewed those people with disdain. Cowardice and greed. There was no room for such vices in Amaurot. 

“Sir!” Purger-2B broke Prometheus from his darkening thoughts, “The portal is ready. Want us to send the go-ahead back home?”

Prometheus cast one last look at the sky above and turned to his teammate. All four Purgers stood around the tall, circular structure (twenty feet high, twenty feet wide, humming with energy), their hands raised in preparation to feed it power. Their visors hid their expressions, but Prometheus could still feel the grim determination clinging to their souls, fast glimpses past their mental walls as they prepared for the atrocities they committed a thousand times over to a thousand others to start anew.

He breathed in deep, artificial air cold in his lungs, and nodded.

“Do it.” 

The portal whirled to life, and once again, the cycle restarted. 


	5. Infiltrate

Dionysus adjusted his hood when a powerful gust of wind swept through the opened tavern door, chasing the heels of a group of armed men all but tumbling inside, rosy-cheeked and dusted with snow. Shouts and grumbles for the door to be shut rose up, and Dionysus bowed his head lower as the armed group passed him by. 

City guards. It’d be annoying if Dionysus got singled out by them.

Everything quickly settled when the guards - three of them - stopped at the tavern’s bar, chatting to the barkeep. In this weather, the tavern was fit to burst, people chasing away the chill with drinks, company and the tavern’s sturdy stone walls and roaring fireplace. These people hadn’t yet discovered central heating, something Dionysus pitied them for, considering how frigid it was up north. 

But, however much he pitied them, he wasn’t allowed to interfere. Not even his title of Halmarut would protect him from punishment if he gave into his compassion. 

Still, he couldn’t help but walk amongst them, from time to time. His role of overseeing Amaurot’s hydroponic farms allowed him some degree of freedom the others lacked. He was encouraged to travel out from Amaurot’s walls to inspect the health and condition of the Source’s ecosystems as well, to ensure the younger races weren’t trashing the land too much as they fumbled their way through a slow, steady progression. In an attempt to keep them from meddling overly much in Amaurot’s business, there were a few teams dedicated towards stymying the Source’s inhabitants’ technological and magical progress, ensuring they remained in stagnant stasis. 

Honestly, Dionysus felt like the others were getting too paranoid. It had been a gradual thing over the last thirteen thousand years, but interest in the younger races on the Source had plummeted to nil - well,  _ positive _ interest, at least - and resentment was hooking its claws in deep. 

It was like they  _ forgot _ these races harboured the Sundered fragments of their long dead kin. They  _ were _ Amaurotines, descendants, just fractured and ignorant of the threat that lay beyond this world’s borders. They weren’t  _ pests _ to be contained or exterminated. They were  _ people _ . They were  _ living creatures _ that they had vowed to  _ nurture  _ and  _ guide. _

But, Dionysus knew better than to argue this anymore. Instead, all he could do was wander out into these societies, learn and document as much as he could, and hope… well, just hope. Maybe Terminus will be eliminated before it all comes to a head, and they could officially pass on the mantle of responsibility to these younger races and  _ sleep. _

Stars, Dionysus couldn’t wait to sleep. 

The door opening again drew his attention, the blistering cold wind whipping at his hood. He pulled it lower, bowing his head with a grumble - enough so that he missed the presence approaching him until they sat at his table. 

His head jerked up, and blue eyes met his own, a quick flash of a familiar soul brushing against his. 

Ah. Speak of the devil...

“What’s the distinguished  _ Mitron _ doing here?” Dionysus asked warily, pitching his voice low. Much like him, Mitron was dressed in drab robes and a heavy hood, common in this kind of weather this far north, though his face was bare of its usual mask. A heavily tanned face, freckled, with bright blue eyes… it wasn’t Mitron’s usual face. 

“I could ask the same, Halmarut,” Mitron murmured, his voice a low rumble, “Your assignment is down  _ south, _ near, ah, Vylbrand, was it? Are you lost?”

A rhetorical question. Dionysus said nothing and simply stared at him blandly. 

Mitron sighed as the silence stretched between them, “Don’t be difficult, Halmarut.”

“I came to admire the flowers,” Dionysus said, keeping his expression and mind entirely neutral, “They bloom nicely at this time of year in Garlemald.”

Mitron looked pointedly at the window. It was entirely white. 

“They’re snow flowers,” Dionysus explained. 

“Halmarut,” Mitron said liltingly, “It doesn’t set a good example, to lie.” 

“Who am I setting an example for here? You?” Dionysus scoffed, “If  _ only _ you took my actions to heart. You might end up being halfway decent.”

Ah, Mitron didn’t like that. The air vibrated slightly, and the people around them shifted restlessly, subconsciously knowing a predator was near, but consciously not perceiving it. It lasted only for a split second, and aside from a muttering ripple, the tavern did not break out into full blown unease. The air did become tense, though. 

The city guards were looking at them now. Dionysus could see over Mitron’s shoulder. 

“Careful,” Dionysus warned without moving his lips, a projection of thought that transcended souls. 

Mitron leaned back, and with a subtle twitch of his fingers, the city guards’ eyes glazed over and they turned away, attention lost. The tension in the tavern eased, and it was as if nothing had happened. The situation was diffused. 

“Apologies,” Mitron said insincerely, “I’ve been on edge, recently.”

Dionysus gave him a look that screamed ‘no kidding’, “Perhaps you should go home and relax for a bit.”

“Mm, my job doesn’t allow for breaks,” Mitron said bitterly, “Unlike  _ you _ , I can’t afford to  _ admire snow flowers _ at my leisure.”

Dionysus chewed on the inside of his cheek, lowering his eyes. The only reason Mitron’s job didn’t allow breaks was because he made it that way. He dogged these civilisations like a wraith of misfortune, blockading their progress and keeping them fractured - and he  _ enjoyed _ it. Dionysus had sensed it, the few times he encountered him out in the wild like this, and he found it repulsive. 

Mitron knew and thought him too  _ soft. _ As if kindness and compassion for these people was a weakness to be firmly stamped out. In Dionysus’s opinion, Mitron’s determination to dehumanise the younger races was evidence of his own cowardice. He probably couldn’t sleep at night otherwise. 

“What’re you doing here?” Mitron asked bluntly. 

“As I said, I came to admire the flowers,” Dionysus said mildly, “That’s all.”

“Hm,” Mitron’s gaze was heavy, but he left it at that, “As you say.”

His fellow Amaurotine left not too long after that, leaving Dionysus feeling cold and lonely despite the warmth of the tavern and the buzz of conversation floating around him. He felt as if there was a widening gulf between him and the others, one that became harder to cross with each passing decade. Fractures in a society once void of all conflict, factions in a Collective once united, individualism in a people once fully conformed. 

It was a terrifying change. 

“But necessary,” Dionysus muttered, “Terminus is our warped reflection, after all.”

Was that why the likes of Mitron were so adamant in breeding dissent and chaos amongst the Source’s inhabitants? They were Sundered, so the possibility of another Terminus rising in them was impossible, but the fear… the fear was always irrational and paranoid. They never quite overcame it, when Terminus bloomed for the first time. 

Dionysus lifted his head, taking in the tavern splayed before him. The guards at the bar, chatting amicably to the barkeep, the tables filled with those fresh from their jobs, their coats tossed over the back of their chairs, faces ruddy from the heat inside, laughter, anger, shouting, camaraderie, jealousy, friction and understanding, all jumbled together in a melting pot of  _ noise _ that was still new and novel to Amaurotines, whose society had spent so many long eons existing in a placid, calm harmony. 

Individualism… it was a terrifying change, but one Dionysus readily met. If that meant his opinions ran violently counter to Mitron, then… that was simply how it was now. 

It was far preferable, to the empty, mindless assimilation of Terminus. 

Of nothing. 


	6. Interlude: Dread Intrusion

**_PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF PATIENT (PROMETHEUS 777-Z)_ **

_**Reason for assessment:** Severe psychological and physiological trauma due to incomplete Terminus infection. Critical information on Terminus’s caustic effects on the soul has been harvested from the specimen, now post-examination care is advised to see if further information can be obtained from a recovered patient. _

_ (Note: normally patients who suffer from incomplete Terminus infections are euthanized, due to irrecoverable mental degradation and chronic, debilitating pain. It is only due to this patient’s unique enhancements that treatment is being administered, though chance of recovery is still below 20% expectancy) _

_**Event:** Patient attended the Sixth Shard’s purging, as Purger-2Z. Upon landing, the patient and his team successfully established a FOB and initiated the purge on a high density feral stage Terminus infection. Communication with the team broke down approx 48hrs after initial arrival. Purger-2A, Purger-2B, Purger-2C and Purger 2-D were all killed during communication blackout. FOB was destroyed when Purger-3 investigated.  _

_ Terminus Infection was elevated to CRITICAL. Terminus units began to enter the Sophistication stage, accelerating towards max biomass density in preparation of terraforming the Sixth Shard into a TERMINUS HIVE. It was at this point, approx 52hrs after Purger-2 Team’s initial arrival, that Purger-3 detected a distress signal linked to Purger-2Z - the patient.  _

_ Approval was given to mount an attempted rescue, due to Purger-2Z being an invaluable asset. After a 6hr operation, and with the loss of Purger-3B and Purger-3C, Purger-2Z was recovered, albeit in a half-frenzied, psychotic state. In an attempt to mitigate the Terminus infection, Purger-2Z ascended into his GUARDIAN FORCE form, shedding physical form to focus wholly on defending the soul.  _

_ (Note: it is unknown what caused the patient’s aggression when coming into contact with Purger-3, but it is hypothesised that the patient’s ARMIGERS tagged any living entity in immediate vicinity as a threat, due to dangers of the Sixth Shard at that point. It is understood that the patient’s consciousness was completely under, and that Purger-3 encountered LAZARUS and SARIEL, jointly controlling the patient’s actions at that time) _

_ Patient was successfully subdued upon arrival into quarantine. Invasive decontamination was immediately administered, as well as forceful reintegration into a clean physical body. This caused additional trauma for the patient, but time was of the essence to mitigate the Terminus Infection and successfully purge the remnants that LAZARUS and LETHE struggled to isolate. After 14hrs the patient was deemed clear of any lingering Terminus, but was now comatose.  _

_ Approx 79hrs after decontamination, the patient regained consciousness. The patient proceeded to suffer hysterical fits, dissociation, auditory hallucinations and exhibited unnerving apathy for their survival. The patient claimed upon waking that they could ‘still hear The Sound’. The patient had to be restrained to prevent them from harming themselves.  _

_ (Note: triple-checked that the patient didn’t have any lingering Terminus in their system - physical or spiritual. They are completely  _ **_clean_ ** _ yet the patient is insisting it can continuously hear The Sound, albeit very quietly and on the edge of hearing. Tinnitus? Auditory hallucination? Potentially an echo that the soul has not yet learned to release, yet. Will have to keep observing, just in case)  _

**_ASSESSMENT #1_ **

_**Patient’s Condition:** stable, apathetic _

_**Diagnosis:** Patient veers wildly between disinterest in traumatic events to insisting ignorance on what happened. Highly likely the patient has repressed the memories - or wishes to. Gentle probing on the possibility of returning to the field caused the patient to shut down the session entirely. ‘I’m not thinking about that right now’. Right now = optimistic the patient can return to the field eventually.  _

**_ASSESSMENT #2_ **

_**Patient’s Condition:** stable, anxious _

_**Diagnosis:** Patient was tense. Auditory hallucinations were active during the session. The patient insisted The Sound was here, and that meant Terminus was close. The session lasted only a few minutes as the patient became increasingly hysterical. The patient is terrified of ‘going back’. Back to fight Terminus? Or back to something else?  _

**_ASSESSMENT #3_ **

_**Patient’s Condition:** stable, belligerent _

_**Diagnosis:** Patient did not speak in today’s session. They were belligerent and uncooperative. Unsure on what caused this response.  _

**_ASSESSMENT #4_ **

_**Patient’s Condition:** stable, apathetic _

_**Diagnosis:** Patient still refuses to discuss the events on the Sixth Shard, but they seem to be overcoming their auditory hallucinations and hysterical fits. Was apathetic towards suggestions on returning to the field, but neither did they exhibit anxiety. Possibility for our valued asset returning in time for the cleansing of the First Shard in two weeks is optimistic.  _

**_ASSESSMENT #5 (FINAL)_ **

_**Patient’s Condition:** stable, apathetic _

_**Diagnosis:** Patient conducted the session competently. They claim to no longer hear echoes of The Sound and their mood was stable, albeit a bit too apathetic. The patient has been well-behaved and shown no troubling behaviour in the last week, so this counts as the last assessment until the annual psychological evaluation. _

_ (Note: EXTENSIVE annual psychological evaluation for this patient. I have a personal hunch that the patient is concealing the true extent of his fragile psyche, but he is either an unnervingly good actor, or his ARMIGERs are micro-managing his mental state to ‘pass’.) _

**_CONCLUSION_ **

_ Prometheus 777-Z is considered fit and mentally able to return to the field.  _

_ ( **IMPORTANT NOTE:** keep him under observation. I suggest placing Aceso in the reconstructed Purger-2 team to ensure a medical professional is close at hand if the patient’s composure slips)  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a glimpse on what happened on the sixth shard that gets mentioned occasionally....

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is a crossover only in that Terminus/The Sound (whatever brought about the Final Days of Amaurot) act very similar (with some differences) to The Flood. For those of you who don't know what that is, its from Halo and it's terrifying. Please refer to this wiki for more info: https://www.halopedia.org/Flood
> 
> But anyways, this is gonna be basically a oneshot series set in this AU. There's no real overarching plot, but just me exploring this kinda alternative universe and what have you. All Convocation members will appear at some point, but Amaurot itself will be. Different. So will the Source. Also plenty of body horror, psychological horror (and torture just bc of the nature of Terminus) and gore, so, uh, be warned.
> 
> Anyways I hope you enjoy this horror show


End file.
